Tag Archives: personal

Hi readers. When Keith Kelt and I were kids in Portales there wasn’t a heluva lot to do. But occasionally a sideshow in a tractor-trailer would show up and park on the city square. Word spread quickly and lines of Portales adults and kids who could afford, what? A nickle? Must have been because I wouldn’t have been able to afford much more.

Hitler’s Car or should I say will the real Hitler’s Car please stand up!

I am looking for a photograph of Pete Sevich’s Hitler’s Armor-Plated Limousine display. I would also be interested in any other Hitler Car sideshows photos.Rick West, Nacogdoches Texas
Rick, as I was researching to answer your question I found that at the end of World War II, Many Mercedes Cars were imported from Europe and put on display on midways as Hitler’s personal limousine. I was unable to find a picture of Pete Sevich Armor Plated Limousine display but I have included three photographs. One of a Hitler Car on display in France and two others of Hitler in his personal limousine. In 1948 Christopher Janus first exhibited a Hitler car which drew large crowds while on display at the New York Museum of Science and Industry. The Amusement Corporation of America started their summer fairs in Springfield, III with his attraction. The car was supervised by Cliff Wilson and was driven to the Springfield fairgrounds. A newspaper reporter from Chicago rode along and it was reported that there were crowds of 5,000 people daily at 50 cents for Adults and 25 cents for children. There was also a photograph of Hitler in Berlin in 1941 riding in his car.

The description on display with the car stated, “All the glass on the vehicle is an inch and a half thick, right side front door is a built in case that holds a Luger pistol. Behind the rear seat is a leather covered sheet of armor that cranks up manually. The car has a 153 inch wheel base making it a long car. It is also heavy, weighing 9,500 pounds. It has an eight cylinder overhead valve motor capable of developing 230 horsepower. The transmission consists of five speeds forward and one reverse plus an overdrive that can be used at speeds up to 125 miles per hour. The large gas tank holds 60 gallons.”

The Hennies Brothers Shows exhibited the car in April of 1949 when they opened their tour in Little Rock Ark.

In 1972 the Miami Herald reported that a 770 K Mercedes was to be auctioned in Scottsdale Az. It was a car that Hitler, Mussolini and Mannerheim had ridden in on state occasions. The car was later shipped from Finland to Sweden so it wouldn’t be captured by the Russians. It was later traded to an American firm by the Swedish government.

Pete Sevich had his Hitler car on the World of Mirth shows in Pennsylvania. It was not the only Hitler car touring at the time. “Adolph Hitler’s Genuine Personal Armored Limousine” and, in parentheses, “Not One That He Just Rode In.” The Prospect Association which was the owner of this Hitler car mounted it in a semi trailer and sold 229,000 paid admissions at one exhibition. In 1957 the car was touring in Texas its owner put it up for sale advertising to the best offer over $3,500.

Pete Sevich on the 1957 World of Mirth Shows midways billed his exhibit as “Hitler’s $35,000 Armored Limousine.” Pete was still booking his car as late as 1966. The trailer it was exhibited on had a 28 foot display area for the car with an eight foot living area over the fifth wheel. Bill Hall bought the trailer so he could display his model of the World of Mirth Shows. Bill was a carnival showman, collector and did band organ restoration. He said the car later was proved to be a fraud and was taken off exhibition and sold for $30,000.
The War Museum in Canada which reported to have one of two real Hitler cars in North America. Their car was first exhibited to raise money to help pay off the war debt. The car was sold in 1956 and 14 years later it was acquired by the museum after it was shown at the Montreal exhibition Man and His World.
There was only one other authentic Hitler car and it had been on display at a Las Vegas casino called the Imperial Palace in there Auto Collection, which included rare models and dozens of vehicles once owned by the rich and infamous. There’s Czar Nicholas II’s 1914 Rolls Royce, Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s 1935 Packard and Adolf Hitler’s 1939 Mercedes. You can also see the cars of several US presidents, and Howard Hughes’ 1954 Chrysler (the air purifier cost more than the car). About 200 vehicles are on display. The museum is located in the Imperial Palace casino, on The Strip.
The owner of the Imperial Palace Ralph Engelstad who started the Auto Collection was a big fan of Nazi memorabilia and had a private “War Room” full of the Nazi Collectibles. He got in big trouble with the Nevada Gaming Control Board for having private parties celebrating Hitler’s birthday that included swastika cakes. He was investigated by the FBI for connections to Neo-Nazi groups. He died in 1993 and since then the Auto Collection has sold off some of there coolest cars, including the Hitler and Mussolini cars. I contacted The Auto Collection at the Imperial Palace which now only sales cars. I was told that 4 years ago the museum closed and they didn’t know where the Hitler Car or what the owner did with it.
There is also a car that might have been owned by Hitler on display at the roadside attraction “The Thing” in Arizona. “The Thing is … we can’t prove it”. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/AZCOCthing.htmlJohn Robinson Sideshow World

Some information derived from AL Stencell Seeing is Believing

Another I recall was John Dillinger’s Terraplane. In those days it was black, though as I remember it. Interesting thing about it was the ash tray in the back seat opened to a tube he could pour roofing nails into. They’d exit from an exhaust-like pipe in back to give flats to pursuers.

The getaway car used by gangster John Dillinger in 1934 is on the move during this 77th anniversary of the infamous outlaw’s death.

Dillinger’s 1933 Essex Terraplane now is at the Richmond, Va., convention center, where it’ll stay until late next year. It had been on display 18 months at the Baltimore airport,

The car, valued at about $150,000, is on loan from the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, D.C. It was displayed there from 2008 until early 2010.

Dillinger escaped from the law several times before he was tracked to a Chicago theater and shot to death by police as he went for his gun when leaving the theater July 22, 1934.

Dillinger bought the Terraplane in March 1934 from the Potthoff Bros. Motor Co. in St. Paul, according to a history compiled by Brotman Winter Fried Communications, promoting the car’s exhibition. Dillinger and his brother, Hubert, crashed it into a farm field April 7, 1934, according to the history.

The dashing red Terraplane was more flamboyant than the infamous gray 1934 Ford V-8 used by robber Clyde Barrow and girlfriend Bonnie Parker at about the same time:

Barrow stole his ride, though, rather than buying it, and ran up some 2,500 miles before the end.

Barrow loved the car and wrote a letter to Henry Ford on April 10, 1934, to “tell you what a dandy car you make.

“I have driven Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got ever other car skinned, and even if my business hasn’t been strictly legal, it don’t hurt anything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V-8.”

Parker and Barrow were gunned down by police in a Louisiana ambush May 23, 1934. Their bullet-riddled Ford sedan has been a prized collector’s item and display piece.

The third one I remember was a lifesize rendition of The Last Supper. Hell, there might have been a lot more I didn’t get to see, or might have forgotten.

Jeanne remembers seeing one when she was a kid in Overland Park, Kansaas, that had props from popular movies. She only remembers the shoes Dorothy wore in Wizard of Oz.

If those were going around today they’d have to charge $25 per head to pay for the fuel and the local cops just to set up shop anywhere.

Seems to me that’s asking for it. I did manage to resist the temptation, but it was difficult.

Hi Readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

When FEDEX delivered this package I examined it with considerable awe. Here’s a device with no instructions, nothing to indicate what it is, nor why the VA had St. Judes send it to me.

It’s evidently intended to be plugged into an electric Coleman camp stove. The camp stove wasn’t included in the package.

However, I eventually got replies from my enquiries to the KCVA about why it was sent. Seems the camp stove should be arriving sometime soon, and that on May 27 I should take it along with me to an appointment with a VA cardiologist specialist and all will be explained.

For the past while my physical prowess has been challenged enough to force me to find alternatives to just reading and meditating, while Jeanne’s pointed out my brain might be failing me from lack of oxygen. So, she introduced me to Mahjong online to exercise my brain cells. Which she has no confidence will help.

But I’ve been enjoying it. Online Mahjong makes for a middling good way to pass some time so long as you make it clear you’re not going to put up with any BS from it. Just hitting the reset button when it tries to throw near-impossible tiles onto that right side and top will keep it towing the line.

Similarly, computerized chess will throw a lot of BS at you, but there’s no easy way of escaping it. Conceding the games early, immediately after it takes your queen, does cut down of the time wasted, but even that finds a traction point eventually.

And all work and no play leads me to movies. A place I haven’t been in decades. Jeanne’s son, Andrew, subscribes to Netflix and allows me to use unlimited streaming video [cheeze I love that phrase] access to their movies.

Watched out movies I haven’t seen except as a kid or teenager, watched movies I loved as a young adult, movies filmed in times a lot different from these. And sated myself out. Huk, starring George Mongomery during the early 1950s is an example. Movie about a ‘native’ Filipino uprising after WWII against the US plantation owners. If we allow the moviemakers to tell us whom to root for we’ll be cheering for the plantation owners every time a little brown brother gets himself shot.

What I’ve learned is there are one hell of a lot of independently made low-budget movies out there capable of providing a type of entertainment I don’t believe movies and television have ever before quite managed. Maybe the funniest I’ve seen yet was an independent titled, “A Fork in the Road“. I’d never have had the pleasure of it if I’d not been blessed by a failing vehicle.

Another hilarious one was “Unidentified“. And a number of Russian ones, Pakistani, Chinese and Korean made movies have offered themselves up for my admiration and piddling around waiting to die or whatever it is I’m doing.

As for good reading material, I’m getting more of it than I can absorb. Jeanne’s library jobs are fine that way. Catching up on Terry Pratchett novels, a nice history, Quantrill at Lawrence, The Untold Story, by Paul R. Peterson, One Summer, America 1927, by Bill Bryson, Prescriptions for Herbal Healing, by Phyllis A Balch, CNC, and Trials of the Diaspora – A History of Anti-Semitism in England, by Anthony Julius.

To name the ones I’m in the process of reading right now.

Saw Harry and Tontowith Art Carney a couple of weeks ago on Netflix. Reminded me of how differently I viewed it when I saw it sometime in the early 1980s. And I resonated far too much with it, Hydrox and myself, to watch it through without dropping a few tears.

Hydrox is hanging in there day by day, for those interested. Who will outlive whom is up for grabs.

Ever noticed how many people hang around discussion boards of every description watching for things they can tell other people NEVER to do?

NEVER play with matches! NEVER ride a bicycle with no brakes! NEVER point an acetylene torch at your face when you light it! NEVER try to get inside a tree shredder while it’s running!

I think there must be something about typing a command about never that feels validating, self-affirming. Telling people what they’ll either have better sense than to do anyway, or who will pay no attention and will do it anyway.

And the fact is, it could as easily be said in ways people might listen to because it wasn’t so offensive and presumptuously downtalking. How about, “Sure would be a big bummer for a person to get his hair caught in that fanbelt.” Something along those lines.

About the only response I can think of appropriate to the NEVER command is “NEVER say NEVER!”

Old Jules
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Hi folks, Jeanne here. That was from the unpublished drafts files…although it’s still possible that it was published and I just didn’t find it. So if it sounds familiar, let me know and I’ll be more careful pulling things out this way. There are 945 published posts on this blog, so I suppose you could just hit “random” and find something entertaining.

Fact is, Old Jules has an unstable phone line right now and can’t keep a connection long enough for the internet. It’s difficult to talk to him for more than a few minutes, although the breaks in the connection get fairly predictable. There’s a lot of repeating and frustration involved with a five minute conversation. But he did approve my putting up this old draft and an update.

Yes, but how is he, you ask. Well…he’s not in the hospital. He sounds real good. He’s got almost zero energy. Drinking Caisse’s tea. Blood oxygen level normal. Blood pressure fluctuating. Reading a lot, generally staying warm and fed. Trying not to get dehydrated or winded. Although he’s isolated, Gale and his neighbor check on him from time to time and some others of us call him frequently and freak out (me) if for some reason he doesn’t answer the phone (usually it’s on the charger).
I suspect it was pneumonia that caused things to deteriorate to the point where he went to the hospital. While treating him for that, they found other stuff to alert him about, and he’s tackling those in order of importance as he sees it.
A couple of us are standing by to take care of the cats if he decides to, or needs to, go back in for the rest of the recommended testing. Gale is out of town on a fairly frequent basis, so we are trying to make sure some satisfactory solution is found for them. I would just drive down there and get them, but 800 miles doesn’t allow for him to get them back easily when things settle down, so that’s not the first choice.
So basically, he’s resting a lot and trying to get his energy back, and I’m preoccupied with keeping tabs on him and passing on updates as needed.
When I can keep my head on straight, I’ll see if I can’t pull some posts out of the drafts from time to time, but I think my own blog is on hiatus for now.
Thanks, C.P., for sending the photo from last week.
And thanks again, everyone, for all your kind thoughts.
Jeanne

Hi again readers: Turned out I ain’t as tough as I believed myself to be. I’m in the hospital in Kerrville, TX, sneaked spang in a couple of days ago through the Emergency Room. They know a lot about what’s been going on inside me now, and all of it is interesting and exciting, though it doesn’t necessarily bode well for my continuing to post on the So Far From Heaven blog a lot longer, everything else being equal.

But I’ve refused most of the things they’d propose to do insofar as keeping me this distance from heaven, plan to get discharged hopefully today, go back out to Gale’s and digest my newfound perspectives. Make some exciting decisions about what a guy in my position ought to be doing with himself, thinking about, spending his time and energy on.

Probably should have been doing that all along, but it wasn’t rubbing right up against it consciously and autopilot isn’t the best place to observe important, exciting events.

Happy New Year to those of you who believe this is a new year and are willing to be happy during it.

When I left Andrews on Christmas Eve morning a cold fog wrapped the RV and a tasteful bow atop kept it all together for the felines and me until I reached Big Spring. That’s where the brakes on the RV failed. Roughly 100 yards before the entryway into the parking lot for a chain store for auto parts.

Great, helpful folks there while I was diagnosing the cause of the problem, feeding brake fluid to the pre-Christmas Universe. Determining the next best guess to be a failed master cylinder. And me with almost no tools along.

Ordered the master cylinder inside the store, arranged with them to park in their lot until it arrived the day following Xmas. They showed me an electrical outlet where I could plug in to keep the heater and lights modern.

Hydrox, Tabby and I watched a store employee carrying boxes past us to the dumpster straining to get them over the side. One plastic box appeared to be a great possibility for a litter box, so I went over to retrieve it. I was astonished to observe the dumpster was home to several boxes with taped label, “Manager Disposal”, the contents scattered among the lowbrow cartons and candy wrappers.

The contents: open end wrenches all sizes, box end wrenches, socket sets, miscellaneous other tools, a couple of which I’d surely need for the master cylinder replacement. So early Christmas morning I climbed down the chimney of the dumpster and began digging out every tool I could bring myself to save from the landfill.

Finished in time to have myself a nice Christmas dinner of something-or-other, cuddle a cat, watch a vintage movie.

Next morning the master cylinder arrived, I installed it with the dumpster-tools, ran the RV around the parking lot a bit to test the brakes, and headed off to points south.

Hunkered into a 1947 US military goose-down sleeping bag, checking the blood oxygen occasionally probably is about as good a way as any to reach Nirvana.

Hi readers:

The coincidence coordinators decided last week that it’s still early times for figuring out what the Veterans Administration Medical Drama Department has in store. Spang shut down their offices mid-week, filled up their voice mail boxes to overflowing before I developed the good sense to bow to the inevitable.

The cats appear to be indifferent to the challenges. Whatever the hell it was caused me to decide I needed to sign up to see a VA medical person will have to get in line behind an ice-melt. Evidently it had nothing at all to do with blood oxygen, anyway.

Welcome

I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.